Contact us at

Categories
blog Business Partners Events

Wonderful Christmastime!

The beautiful Charity Shop window

“December will be Magic Again” is what Kate Bush sang back in 1983, and for Swanage & Purbeck Rotary it’s December 2021 that’s been magic thanks to the activities of its Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO – the club’s fundraising arm) during the month.

From the pop-up shop in Station Road, to the Christmas Market, the Charity Mail to Santa’s Sleigh, our wonderful local community has stepped forward and supported the CIO’s fundraising activities in a quite phenomenal way.

The shop started back in November selling books and bric-a-brac before opening its Christmas door at the beginning of December. We have been delighted with the response from the community, who flocked to the shop and quickly snapped up virtually everything we had for sale. Last year was the first time we had tried to run the shop and the funds raised this year have smashed through what we already thought was a good year in 2020.

Swanage Christmas Market

On 4th December the CIO, after an enforced year’s absence, was once again able to run the popular Swanage Christmas Market in Station Road and despite forecasts of strong winds the day turned out to be beautifully clear and sunny with less strong winds, resulting in hundreds of people coming down to sample what was on offer. All the traders who spoke to us told us how pleased they were to be able to take part in the event again and it was great success.

Hard at work with the Charity Mail!

The CIO also ran the Charity Mail service, with offices in Swanage town centre, Studland and Langton accepting Christmas cards for local addresses and personally delivering them during the third week of the month. Our members and volunteers worked tirelessly to ensure that everything given to us was correctly sorted and delivered in plenty of time.

Santa & Elves at the Co-Op

And, of course, Santa came to town and spent almost three weeks travelling around Swanage, Herston, Langton Matravers and Corfe Castle (in association with Crazy4Corfe) with his elves, bringing happiness and joy to local residents and handing out sweets to the children. The reaction of local residents to the sleigh has been amazing and enabled the CIO, again, to break all records for fundraising.

Getting those Yellow Food Bags delivered!

As well as all that, we have been able to recommence our support of the Friendly Food Club. Our Youth committee was able to provide 149 Christmas food bags for local pre-schools, following on from the efforts that took place at the start of the pandemic in providing ingredients and preparation instructions for local people to cook wholesome festive meals for their families.

We never cease to be amazed by the support we get from our community, and we are incredibly grateful to you all for the way that you help us to help those less fortunate, not only in our local community but also in national funding initiatives in the UK and across the world with campaigns such as JabItForward, which has helped to fund COVID-19 vaccinations to poorer countries and End Polio Now, aiming to finally eradicate polio from the world.

From all of us in Swanage & Purbeck Rotary, and our lovely friends, volunteers and Business Partners, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and the hope that 2022 will be a better year for us all.

Categories
blog Members

Gold Standard!

047a1e18 9f87 47d8 9e71 c62b00d85c33

Since the beginning of 2021, our two ‘Angels of Mercy’ Maggie Hardy and Sue Whitton have stepped up to help in the mass vaccination programme at Wareham hospital.

In the period between January and October they have vaccinated an incredible 4,250 patients, protecting those individuals and the wider community from the threat of COVID-19.

Maggie and Sue are both retired medical professionals who have selflessly put themselves forward to help protect our community and justifiably have been awarded Gold Medals and Certificates for their superb efforts.

Here at Swanage & Purbeck Rotary we are very proud of Maggie and Sue and would like to add our own congratulations to them both.

Categories
blog Members Rotary Announcements

World Immunisation Week, 24th – 30th April 2021

8708ae06 39b4 410a a61e ce0510cae38b 1 201 a

Rotarian Maggie Hardy reports on a real good news story:

Swanage and Purbeck Rotary has supported the Global Polio Eradication Programme for many years both financially and by the attendance of three club members at a National Immunisation Day in Delhi, India. Rotary members know the power of immunisation well and are delighted that this awful virus is now only endemic in two countries but recognise that this disease is only a plane ride away so every effort must be made to continue support and completely eradicate Polio.

Over the last year S&P has raised £2,000 for Polio Eradication which is an amazing achievement during the coronavirus. This amount will be trebled by the Bill and Melinda Gate ‘s Foundation giving a sizeable donation of £6,000 to Polio eradication.

And now as Covid -19 vaccines are distributed around the world the well- established infrastructure for Polio is being used to support the pandemic with every effort being made to promote the value of immunisation/vaccination which will be highlighted with greater importance this year during World Immunisation week at the end of April. 

In S&P Rotary our support continues positively with the ‘Jab it Forward’ campaign, devised by a local Rotarian and her nephew to encourage all those who have been given their Covid vaccines by the NHS to donate the sum of £5 per vaccine to a fund aiming to provide Covid-19 vaccines to low- income nations around the world.

                                                “No one is safe until we are all safe”  

And locally Rotarians have also been supporting the Purbeck Vaccination Centre in Wareham as members of the vaccinator team working alongside many other volunteers who wish to help with the important work of Covid -19 vaccination.

Categories
blog Members Rotary Announcements

Happy Birthday Rotary!

b34193a9 fe95 4680 a571 b1db6f096282

On February 23rd 1905, a man called Paul Harris, a lawyer in Chicago Illinois, arranged to meet up with some of his business acquaintances from the city to see what they could do to help the local community.

And so Rotary was born.

One hundred and sixteen years later, it now numbers over 1.2 million members in more than 35,000 clubs covering virtually every country of the world. And as we celebrate its birthday today, it has probably never been more relevant, supporting its local community and projects around the world through its seven areas of focus and helping to make the world a better place.

And what better way to demonstrate that in our own group than through the help that members of Swanage Rotary are providing to the COVID-19 vaccination programme. The picture above shows two members of our group – Maggie Hardy and Sue Whitton – at the Wareham Hospital vaccination centre where they have been supporting the incredible rollout to our community.

Rotary is open to anyone over the age of 18, so if you are interested in finding out more about us, what we do, the projects we’re involved in and how you can get involved, take a look at the Volunteer’ page on this website or contact our secretary.

Categories
blog Members

‘Hybrid’ Meeting Hears Shelterbox Update

In a first for our club, this week’s meeting was an experiment in combining a Zoom Meeting with a socially distanced physical one at our normal meeting venue of Swanage Conservative Club.

Just under half of the members met in person, with the venue ensuring that safety was paramount, people seated in accordance with Government guidelines and both food and drink served to us to avoid unnecessary movement around the venue. Then, after the meal, we started the Zoom meeting with other members joining us virtually via a laptop and projection onto the large screen in the club.

Our speaker, also joining us via Zoom, was Keith Lockett, who is our local Shelterbox co-ordinator. He gave us a superb presentation, screen shared via Zoom so that everyone could see it, on the work of Shelterbox since it’s inception, how many people it has provided assistance for, how our own club has made significant contributions over the years and how the organisation has had to adapt in the current COVID-19 circumstances.

After the presentation, Keith answered a number of questions from members on the various topics that had been presented. On behalf of the club Rotarian Dai Hounsell proposed a vote of thanks for an excellent update on the work of the charity.

Initial reaction to this experimental form of meeting was very positive and assuming that follow-up feedback is equally positive we are likely to conduct further meetings via this method, assuming the virus situation does not adversely affect plans.

As ever, anyone wishing to join us for future meetings is most welcome. Just contact the secretary for joining details.